Administrator’s Garden (in simplified Chinese 拙政园) was built in Ming Zhengde Period in 1509. It was built by a retired official in the Ming Dynasty. According to one of the poems written by him, he enjoyed the life staying in the Garden, and he liked keeping in touch with some other officials in order to see whether the government was still operating well. Therefore, people called him an administrator and the garden became the Administrator’s Garden.

Unfortunately, after the death of this official, his son was so stupid that he lost the whole garden through a gamble. Since then, the garden’s owner changed quite frequently. However, just because it was changed so frequently, there was not much reconstruction work done on the garden.

After the liberation, the Communist Party as well as the government worked very hard to carry out maintenance work to restore the view of the garden because although not much change was brought to the garden, the Garden still gradually worn out. Luckily, after the hard work of the government, the Garden became fine again and the renovated Administrator’s Garden was formally opened in 1952 to the public.

The Administrator’s Garden is located in Suzhou City’s No. 178 Northeast Street, covering an area of 52,000 square meters. The whole Garden is divided into four parts, which are the eastern, central, western as well as the residential parts. There are a lot of interesting plants in the Garden, which are unique in China. There are also a lot of unique buildings in the garden’s residential part. The houses are beautifully decorated to make the people living there feel more joyful.

Therefore, Administrator’s Garden is one of the places that you should try to visit when you come to Suzhou. You would be able to enjoy the relaxing garden view as well as the beautiful artificial buildings. Of course, you have to pay some entrance fees in order to maintain the renovation of the Garden. However, it was just about 60 yuan, which is really cheap. You would surely find it worthwhile.